p2pnet.net News:- The entertainment industry’s deep penetration of the US Congress and its iron control over segments of the American university higher education system should be a shocking embarrassment to the US administration.

Apparently, however, it’s acceptable.

Yesterday saw an ‘update’ oversight hearing at the House Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Courts. It was labelled, ‘Peer-to-Peer Piracy (P2P) on University Campuses’.

The Judicianry Committee is chaired by senator Orrin Hatch, champion of the entertainment industry’s INDUCE bill.

The House Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Courts is in turn chaired by senator F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr, recently accused of abusing his power for the benefit of the recording industry.

On the Witness List were RIAA (Recording Industry Asociation of America) president Cary Sherman, Penn State University president Graham Spanier, Jim Davis, information technology professor of chemical engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, and Alan McGlade, ceo of Big Music’s moribund MusicNet.

The RIAA’s principal fact realignment specialist, Sherman co-chairs Hollywood’s Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities [JCHEEC] with Spanier, who’s president of the first US university to become a dedicated music industry campus sales and pr unit.

The UCLA was the second US university to develop software to specifically enable it to act as an entertainment industry enforcer against its own students.

Spanier refers to the, “millions of young men and women who, while in the transition from adolescence to adulthood, are massive consumers of entertainment products at the same time they are developing personal value systems“.

Think about that observation.

“Music collection and enjoyment remains a favorite pastime for students,” says Sherman, going on, “Unfortunately, so does piracy. We’ve been doing our part to address this issue.”

And so it should, considering it created it from scratch and then used it to force the Big Four record label cartel first into Penn and then into other universities under the pretext of helping them to avoid prosecutions initiated by its RIAA.

Davis’ testimony is particularly interesting and reveals “a constructive working partnership with a core group of MPAA member studios and the MPAA itself in the Los Angeles area”.

Together, the statements make a lot of reading but we thought it was important to have them in full and together in one spot.

They’re reproduced below, with the exception of McGlade’s contribution which amounts to a sales pitch.

Read on >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

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Cary Sherman on ‘Peer-To-Peer Piracy On University Campuses’

Chairman Smith, Ranking Democratic Member Berman, and Members of the Subcommittee, I appreciate this opportunity to appear before the Subcommittee today to continue our ongoing discussion of P2P piracy on campus. In particular, I gratefully acknowledge the Subcommittee’s steadfast commitment to this subject, as evidenced by the fact that it was the subject of the very first hearing held in this Subcommittee this Congress. The work of this Subcommittee has been invaluable in helping us convey the message that illegal downloading on college campuses – or anywhere else – is simply not acceptable.

This past month, schools across the country have welcomed students back to a continuously evolving environment. With a casual walk across campus, it is impossible to miss the iPods and other portable music devices; with a quick visit to any dorm room, you will discover the stacks of CDs or the computers full of mp3s. Music collection and enjoyment remains a favorite pastime for students. Unfortunately, so does piracy.

We’ve been doing our part to address this issue. For instance, the Campus Action Network (CAN), a program led by Sony BMG and supported by other record companies, has worked to encourage and facilitate the launch of legitimate music services on campuses across the country. These services are made possible by the specialized packages and greatly discounted rates provided by the entertainment industry. The motion picture industry has also instituted a program to work with schools to address P2P piracy on campus. We are working hard to find new ways to provide the entertainment products students want and can acquire conveniently and legally. At the same time, we have reminded students that their academic status does not give them a free pass to infringe. Since March of this year, 190 students at 61 universities have been included in a series of lawsuits directed at infringers of copyrighted material on P2P networks. The message has been received loud and clear: responsibility does not wait for graduation.

We are pleased to report that schools have been doing their part as well. There is considerable good news here. As the Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities reported to this subcommittee in August, colleges and universities across the country have become engaged in a variety of initiatives to stem the rampant piracy on their computer networks. Perhaps the most exciting of these initiatives have been the partnerships between schools and legitimate online services I mentioned earlier. These agreements, jump-started by the success of a landmark deal between the now-legitimate Napster and Penn State University, have enabled college and university administrations to offer their students access to the music they desire – and, indeed, often demand – while ensuring the responsible, safe, and economic use of their network resources. To date, 25 schools have reported signing with legitimate services such as Napster, Cdigix, RealNetworks, MusicRebellion, Ruckus, and iTunes to distribute content legally and efficiently. And interest is growing exponentially. We have seen the formation of school task forces, and even student groups, to consider whether a campus-based online service is best for them. Student papers have carried editorials eagerly requesting such services at their schools. Schools have also worked to find new uses for these services, such as offering streaming and downloadable content to augment their curriculum.

The installation of these services on campuses has helped to reduce network congestion, decrease infringements, and maintain the security and integrity of the system. Schools have also turned to other technological means to curtail improper use of their networks. In addition to traditional bandwidth shaping and limits, new systems and devices are being used across the country. The University of Florida introduced ICARUS, an application that automatically prevents infringement through P2P services. UCLA implemented ACNS, an automated system that streamlines the notification of, and penalty for, copyright infringement. Audible Magic’s CopySense system, which uses filtering technology to weed out infringing transmissions, has also been installed to great effect on several school networks.

Of course, education remains a fundamental component of any school’s fight against P2P piracy. Recognizing their unique position to prepare students for the opportunities and responsibilities of adulthood, institutions across the country have undertaken various initiatives to inform students about copyright laws and the appropriate use of computer networks. Emails and letters have been sent to school communities by presidents and deans; tutorials and quizzes have been designed to ensure compliance with policies, laws, and standards; notices, posters, and fliers have been distributed; discussions, presentations, and courses have been held; skits, videos, and other entertaining informative pieces have been made. More and more students are not only getting the message that using their schools’ resources to engage in illegal conduct is wrong, they are learning why. Copyrighted works have value and theft of these works does, indeed, cause harm. Importantly, it is this knowledge that students carry with them and apply after graduation.

Finally, messages are hitting home through enforcement. Violations of schools’ acceptable use policies regularly carry penalties, and abuses of schools’ computer networks are no exception. Students are increasingly aware of the frequently tiered courses of action taken after incidents of online infringement. First violations often carry warnings and brief denials of network access. Second violations often increase penalties to extended denials of network access, referrals to the Dean, and probation. Third violations, while rare, can often lead to permanent removal from the network, suspension, or, in extreme cases, even expulsion.

The combined effects of these initiatives – legitimate services, technology, education, and enforcement – have resulted in a positive change in the attitudes and responses of administrations and students.

However, with the good news comes the distinct reminder that we are not in the clear. College and university campuses remain a hotbed for piracy. Students, with limited budgets and, perhaps, misguided senses of entitlement, can unfortunately still find a treasure trove of valuable and free copyrighted works available over extremely fast and convenient computer networks.

In fact, the speed of these networks has created new challenges for copyright owners. Internet 2, a consortium of schools, industry, and government, is an exciting platform for advanced network applications and technologies. Yet, as with other networks, bad actors have begun to hijack it, threatening to turn a beneficial and promising technology into a tool for piracy. Already, P2P systems, such as i2hub, have been set up on Internet 2, facilitating the abuse of advanced networking technology to illegally distribute copyrighted works for free. The speed of these networks – up to thousands of times faster than ordinary Internet networks – allows users to obtain copyrighted movies in minutes and music in seconds. Further, the closed nature of these networks, being available only to those engaged in academia, makes it more difficult for copyright owners to protect their works and to notify responsible parties of their infringement.

The naturally high speeds of college and university networks has also allowed students to set up local area networks – or LANs – to connect with others solely within their individual schools. The RIAA brought suit last year against the student operators of four such networks, who had effectively used their school’s resources to create “mini-P2P networks” to facilitate the mass piracy of copyrighted works on their campuses. As with Internet 2, the closed nature of these LANs makes it difficult to discover such misuse. College and university administrations are in the best position to determine the pervasiveness of this LAN-based piracy, and to take action to stop it.

School administrations have been working hard to bring users of their computer networks into compliance with proper standards, laws, and acceptable use policies. But it is imperative that they do not allow loopholes in their rules and enforcement. Restrictions placed on standard Internet use should be clearly extended to new and evolving opportunities such as Internet 2 and LANs. The vigilance with which administrators ensure the integrity of their systems must continue through the introduction of these new services and technologies.

P2P piracy clearly remains a problem on college and university campuses across the country. And, undoubtedly, challenges lie ahead. Yet, the opportunities for the education and entertainment communities to work together toward a mutually beneficial end have never been as great as they are today. With the multi-pronged approach I’ve discussed here and in the Joint Committee report to this Subcommittee in August, the future looks even brighter. We look forward to continuing our work with all interested parties and to providing increasingly positive reports in the future.

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Graham Spanier on ‘Peer-To-Peer Piracy On University Campuses’

I welcome the opportunity to update members of the House Judiciary Committee on the collective, collaborative efforts of higher education and the entertainment industry to discourage, prevent, and combat the piracy of intellectual property. I know that this issue is of continuing concern to members of Congress, as it is to university presidents and to those whose livelihoods are associated with motion pictures and music.

I have dedicated considerable time during the past two years to this effort because I believe that higher education must be part of the solution. Universities are among the principal creators of intellectual property in our nation, and we must teach and practice respect for it. We operate libraries and university presses where copyrights are created, understood, and protected. We invent and operate some of the most sophisticated information technology systems in the world, and it is in our best interests to protect our network infrastructures from misuse and abuse.

And we have some level of responsibility for the well being of millions of young men and women who, while in the transition from adolescence to adulthood, are massive consumers of entertainment products at the same time they are developing personal value systems.

I have been grateful to have the opportunity to work directly with leaders from the movie and music industries in educational initiatives, public information activities, legislative relations, and information technology solutions. We don’t always agree, but we have found that our overlapping interests are substantial, and over the past two years we have communicated more openly than ever before, we have cooperated on a broad range of initiatives, and we have discovered many areas of mutual concern. We have supported many of the efforts of the Recording Industry Association of America, assisted the successful College Action Network (spearheaded by Sony Music on behalf of the music industry), opened doors to universities for on-line music providers, encouraged the anti-piracy efforts of the Motion Picture Association of America, and urged our colleagues in higher education to address piracy aggressively on their campuses.

During the past 18 months Cary Sherman and I have provided this committee with regular updates on the progress of our joint committee. Appended to the written version of my oral testimony is a comprehensive report recently submitted on the progress of our efforts during the 2003-2004 academic year. The report covers the rapid development and deployment of legitimate on-line music services and our encouragement of contractual arrangements with universities. In addition, we review the efforts of the College Action Network. A range of educational initiatives is described. We discuss enforcement activities and the role they play. And we review technological measures that have been deployed.

I will be pleased to discuss this progress in more detail with you and answer your questions. I am proud of the massive increase in awareness among college students developed in just the past year, in the increasingly enlightened responsiveness of university leaders and our higher education associations, in the creativity and flexibility that has emerged from our industry colleagues, and in the constructive encouragement we have seen from members of Congress. Thank you for your support.

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Jim Davis on ‘Peer-To-Peer Piracy On University Campuses’

Mr. Chairman, Congressman Berman, Members of the Committee, I appreciate this opportunity to appear before the subcommittee today. I am here this morning to share with you a close-up view of UCLA and the University of California in action on peer-to-peer file sharing and copyright infringement.

The starting point is to state emphatically that, as creators of intellectual property ourselves, UCLA and the University of California (let me refer to the University of California as UC) take illegal file sharing and copyright infringement very seriously. This is true whether we are talking about software, books, journals or entertainment media, and whether infringement occurs on-line or off-line.

This is not an idle assertion but in fact a position statement that has made it possible for UCLA and UC to form a constructive working partnership with a core group of MPAA member studios and the MPAA itself in the Los Angeles area. The value of our UC/Studios working group continues to evolve positively and expand.

For UCLA, a key step beyond education and bandwidth management has been the development of an approach called the “UCLA Quarantine.” The value of the UC/Studios working group becomes apparent in that the genesis of the UCLA Quarantine approach

arose from an early dialog with Universal Studios. At the time, UCLA was articulating what it wanted to achieve and Universal was developing the Automated Copyright Notification System, or ACNS. We proceeded with the implementation of the UCLA Quarantine approach, which reflects the underlying design principle of ACNS and recognizes the value of an efficient response to a first notification of infringement. Universal developed and submitted ACNS to the Joint Committee.

At its most fundamental level, the UCLA Quarantine approach turns a copyright infringement notification into a campus judicial matter. Upon receiving a claim of infringement, the offending computer, associated with the named network address, is identified and put into quarantine: that is, file sharing is effectively blocked internally and externally. Access to on-campus student services such as library resources and registration is still maintained while in quarantine, recognizing that an individual needs to continue to function in his or her educational capacity even as the claim is adjudicated.

The “first offense” situation is treated as a teachable moment, with the goal of changing behavior. The quarantine can be lifted by an automatic process upon acknowledgement and agreement with policy and the removal of the material. It is made clear that a repeat offense will result in being summoned by the Dean of Students and that sanctions have ranged from

warnings to suspension.

The quarantine approach was put in place for Spring Quarter 2004. We hesitate to draw conclusions on cause and effect or overall impact without further data and experience to conduct an appropriate assessment. However, there are two observations from this first quarter of operation that stand out and will be reviewed.

First, there was a substantial drop in notifications at the point in time that the quarantine went into operation. Of the 52 claims received during the quarter, 22 claims (42%) arrived in the first two weeks, whereas the remaining 30 claims (58%) were received in the remaining eight weeks. In the two immediate prior quarters, there were 67 claims received (all first incidents) in Fall Quarter 2003 and 89 claims received (79 first incidents and 10 second incidents) in Winter Quarter 2004. Second, although we saw a small number of individuals who had a first claim arrive prior to the quarantine being put into place and a second claim arrive afterwards, we have not seen anyone receive a first and second claim after quarantine was in effect. In other words, there have been no repeat incidents with the quarantine approach in operation.

It should be noted that while UCLA is a campus of 35,000 students, some 7,500, or about 20%, live in residence. This distribution of residential and non-residential students is similar for the UC’s 270,000 students across its 10 campuses. For UCLA, again similar to other UC campuses, about 80% of copyright notifications point to machines in the residential alls.

Those relatively few notices that point to machines on the main campus have usually been the result of security issues in which a computer has been compromised by a virus or hacker and file sharing software installed on it unbeknownst to the owner of the computer. Frequently, however, such compromised systems are detected by the campus network group looking for unusual traffic patterns that would indicate a computer compromise (and a claim arrives after the computer has already been fixed).

• In stressing the main points, the UCLA Quarantine approach:
• Preserves due process for the individual while fully complying with the letter and spirit of the copyright laws.
• Is driven as a judicial matter, not as an information technology issue.
• Ensures the student judicial process and sanctions for copyright infringement are viewed in the context of all judicial issues.
• Is technically integrated with virus and security management of student computers in the residence halls.

From the outset, we sought more holistic approaches that (1) would satisfy copyright law, (2) could become an integrated part of the community and its policies, processes and culture, (3) would be sustainable, (4) would be more than a short-lived fix to solve an immediate problem, especially in light of how rapidly the technology is changing and (5) would deal with the piracy problem fundamentally as a student life problem and not just an information technology problem. We feel the quarantine approach meets these needs. Nevertheless, the quarantine approach is inherently a defensive approach – reactive to notifications of infringement – as it was designed to be. We continue to look for measures that can complement the UCLA Quarantine approach and that are consistent with our objectives. UC is coordinating efforts to monitor both the defensive and legal service initiatives at other universities. At UCLA, we have been working on this question of additional measures with the UC/Studios group and with Professor Jeffrey Cole, formerly Director of the UCLA Center for Communications Policy and now Director of the USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future. From Professor Cole’s UCLA Internet Report, Page 5 of 6

Year, there are indications that defensive approaches, e.g., subpoenas, are having a social impact. However, the data also show that legal services may be having a constructive effect as well.

Thus recently, the University of California began work on a Request for Proposals (RFP) with the intent of facilitating access for UC campuses to legal on-line entertainment media services. For UCLA, we believe some kind of legal service will be another important “piece of the puzzle” but we also realize we must now consider movies in addition to music. The

growing trend with movies has been a particularly prominent topic of discussion with our UC/Studios working group.

The University and the UC/Studios working group is also cooperating with the Governor’s office on Governor Schwarzenegger’s recent Executive Order on anti-piracy. UC leadership shares the objectives expressed in the Executive Order and campuses are actively pursuing effective practices and solutions to achieve them within the context of the UC operating principles and policy.

The RFP and the working group are two important components of a multi-faceted strategy for the University of California. Other efforts continue in parallel. For example, a resource kit containing posters, graphics and text has been developed for systemwide use by campuses in their educational campaigns. There is ongoing dialog between student affairs, general counsel and information technology to ensure appropriate input is being coordinated systemwide. And the Council of Chancellors is routinely apprised of developments and activities in this area.

Page 6 of 6

In closing, I want to again acknowledge the constructive impact and value of the UC/Studios working group. We are currently sharing information on illegal file sharing trends and indicators, discussing policy recommendations to the State Government and considering selective evaluation projects and pilots.

I hope this quick tour of our efforts may have provided you with insight into operational approaches that we believe show signs of addressing some of the issues of this very complex and big problem.

I thank you for this invitation to speak on this topic and would be pleased to respond to any questions.

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See:-

INDUCE bill – Josh Wattles on INDUCE, p2pnet, September 22, 2004

abusing his power – Groups call for public action to open ethics investigation on Sensenbrenner, Webcaster Alliance, October 10, 2003

JCHEEC – University p2p ‘report’, p2pnet, August 25, 2004

industry enforcer – UCLA becomes Hollywood enforcer, p2pnet, April 29, 2004

value systems – RIAA sues more students, p2pnet, October 4, 2004

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